All it takes is an hour or two of Russian state television to learn that someone is plotting against Russia. Watch for a few more hours, and you’ll find that everyone is plotting against Russia. Watch for a few more days, and the truth comes out: Russia is plotting against Russia.

Thanks to the increasingly baroque explanations of “what really happened” to Flight MH17, the Western media have turned their attention to a feature of post-Soviet Russia that is all too familiar to those of us who’ve been paying attention: Russia has become a world leader in the production of conspiracy theories.